I'm currently evaluating Drupal for our site redesign, and I ran into a question that I have been unable to answer through my search of Drupal's documentation and various modules.
The issue: I have content that I would like to abstract into a content type (let's call the content type "figure"). This "figure" will contain html, images, etc. These figures can be stand-alone (on a page by themselves), but also embedded in an article (or story, if that's the proper term). (Abstraction allows for re-use in later articles.)
The problem is that I have been unable to find any means of inlining these figure content nodes at arbitrary points in an article. (Basically, referencing them within the body text of the article, so that they're pulled in and displayed.)
This is important because the figures will be cited in the text, and the closer the figure is physically to the actual citation, the clearer the illustration becomes. If all the figures have to reside at the bottom of an article, their efficacy is lost.
Boiled down to a sentence, "Is it possible to inline content nodes in the text of other cotent nodes?"
I have looked on the site and found various comments about inlining, an "Inline API" which doesn't seem to be active any more, and some various other bits that don't seem to fit the bill.